Oude Kerk: The Sailors' Church and Rembrandt's Saskia

Why is it significant?

Look up at the towering timber-vaulted roof and delicate spire of the Oude Kerk rising right in the center of the Red Light District. Consecrated in thirteen zero-six and dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, this is the oldest standing building in all of Amsterdam.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Look up at the towering timber-vaulted roof and delicate spire of the Oude Kerk rising right in the center of the Red Light District. Consecrated in thirteen zero-six and dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, this is the oldest standing building in all of Amsterdam. For centuries, ocean-going sailors climbed down from their wooden caravels and knelt on these stones to pray for survival before sailing into stormy Arctic waters or around the Cape of Good Hope.

Look down at the floor beneath your boots: the entire floor is composed of two thousand five hundred weathered grey gravestones. Over ten thousand citizens lie buried beneath this stone pavement, including famous admirals, merchant governors, and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

Near the choir lies grave number twenty-nine, the resting place of Saskia van Uylenburgh, the beloved wife and muse of painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Rembrandt married Saskia in sixteen thirty-four and painted her radiantly in countless masterpieces, but she died of tuberculosis at just twenty-nine years old, leaving Rembrandt heartbroken and penniless.

In fifteen seventy-eight, during the Protestant Alteratie, Calvinists stripped the church of its Catholic golden statues, leaving the massive oak barrel-vaulted ceiling looking like an inverted wooden ship hull. The juxtaposition of this solemn medieval sanctuary surrounded by glowing neon windows is quintessential Amsterdam.